Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci (January 22, 1891 – April 27, 1937) was an Italian political theorist and founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy. Gramsci’s theories have quietly been incorporated into American culture for at least 50 years. Gramsci believed that the way to incorporate Marxism in capitalist societies was best achieved from the bottom up by stealthily changing the beliefs of the culture itself, called “cultural hegemony.” Cultural hegemony involves softening, or radicalizing, the culture’s beliefs about various social issues such as homosexuality, marriage, education, women’s issues, religion, divorce, pornography, media, abortion and established political parties. The idea is to move everything to the left so that eventually new norms are rooted into society - a Gramsci form of the Overton Window if you will...[1]

Gramsci Symposium

The College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University hosted “Gramsci Now: Cultural and Political Theory,” an international symposium to mark the 70th anniversary of the death of Antonio Gramsci, November 9-11, 2007 in East Lansing, Michigan, USA.